wall as I looked over my shoulder toward the stairs. There was something about Henry…
I banished the thought and focused instead on the help that Deirdre offered. Maybe we could get rid of Rocko, and then I would be free to find my own way. I didn’t dare hope that she could really help me with the larger affliction of uncontrollable magic, but at least getting rid of Rocko’s threat was a place to start.
Chapter 16
Henry
Henry didn’t like the idea of that sorcerer—whatever the hell a sorcerer actually was—keeping Ophelia against her will. The witch left a lot unsaid, but he read between her words and figured there was a lot of evil done by that bastard. It left the wolf agitated, furious. More inclined to follow the witch around to make sure she was safe.
Which left him feeling more off-balance than he had since first leaving Montana and finding his place in Evershaw’s pack.
He strode through the dark streets, pacing another lonely watch through their territory, and searched for any signs that coyotes or wolves or other stray shifters dared to hunt on SilverLine’s side of the city. Two days had passed since Ophelia arrived on their doorstep and not a whisper of trouble followed her.
The city was quiet.
Almost too quiet.
It made Henry’s nerves twitch. He didn’t believe in coincidence or luck really, and it felt too much like luck that all the trouble that kicked up with Ophelia’s arrival just disappeared shortly after. Evershaw met with the new coyote alpha, the dark-eyed vixen named Daisy, but she calmly dismissed his concerns and said none of her coyotes were in the habit of chasing down witches.
Evershaw believed her, but Henry wasn’t so sure. He knew there had been coyotes in the group that surrounded Ophelia that first night. They could have been strays, but they’d moved with the wolves like a pack…
He shook off the question of a new threat in the city and focused instead on tracking the scent of a strange wolf through their territory. Deirdre’s house was far enough from the city center that they periodically got random strays just passing through, so a single appearance wasn’t necessarily enough to create a new problem. He bared his teeth into the darkness as an uneasy feeling crept up his spine, and kept moving. Of course, after the other trouble, a single appearance of a lone wolf could mean anything.
The air moved and an oddly familiar scent teased him from the distance. It smelled vaguely like Ophelia, enough that his guts clenched and he wondered what she was doing out and about at one in the morning. The woman had secrets, he knew that much, but none of them had seemed particularly dangerous. Even with a mysterious sorcerer chasing after her.
Henry paused to listen, straining to hear a sign of what else moved through the night. He didn’t turn as Dodge, one of the other wolves in SilverLine, meandered over from his own nightly rounds. “You find anything?”
Henry shook his head and checked his watch. “Nothing. You?”
“All quiet.” Dodge rubbed his jaw and glanced once more into the shadows cast by the weak streetlights. “Too quiet.”
“Yeah.” Henry frowned and started to walk in the direction of that scent he’d caught earlier, the hint of Ophelia. “You sure you didn’t see anything?”
“I’m sure.” Dodge followed, hands shoved in his pockets, but there wasn’t any attitude in his response. He wasn’t the kind of guy who got worked up over having to answer questions, even if they were the same questions repeated. Henry had known him for a couple of years and appreciated the quiet wolf’s laid-back approach to pretty much everything. But sometimes he was a touch too laid-back.
Henry inhaled deeply and turned, searching the streets, and growled in his chest as the scent wisped away into nothingness. “Do you smell that?”
“I smell exhaust and dogshit, that’s it.”
“No,” Henry muttered. “It’s like…honeysuckle. Something sweet. Almost…perfume.”
Dodge’s eyebrow arched. “Honeysuckle? Are you drunk?”
“No,” he said, then snorted. “Definitely not. I just thought… For a second it smelled like…”
“The witch?”
Henry looked at Dodge sharply, his eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”
A hint of a smile touched Dodge’s otherwise expressionless visage, and the other wolf glanced at him and then away. “She’s the only thing that smells like honeysuckle in this part of the city. She supposed to meet you out here or something?”
Henry growled before he could rein in his temper, and he turned away so Dodge wouldn’t see his face.